The present invention relates to grilling appliances, and particularly to an electrical grilling appliance for use in grilling meat products, such as steaks, hamburgers, and the like, in an extremely short time. The invention also describes food holders particularly useful in such grilling appliances.
A large number of electrical grilling appliances are known and described in the patent literature. The known grilling appliances generally include open grills, racks or meshes for holding the food article to be grilled. However, such grilling appliances usually require a considerably period of time to grill a steak or hamburger. Other appliances are known, such as described in our prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,762,058 and 5,181,455, which permit food articles to be grilled in a relatively short period of time.
A grilling appliance teaching a simplified, compact and efficient system to grill food articles in a very short period of time is disclosed in our copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/631,231 filed Mar. 8, 1996, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,970,851. This appliance disclosed and claimed driving means to urge grilling plates to one another to cause the food article to be pressed therebetween. While this patent application disclosed in detail electrical motor drive means for moving the plates together, and discussed the substitution of manual drive means for the electrical drive means and broadly claimed both such means, no specific manual drive means were disclosed.
Thus, there is a need for providing a simplified yet efficient appliance that permits the grilling of food articles in the manner disclosed in the aforementioned patent application yet allows for the use of manual drive means, thereby appreciably reducing the cost of these appliances.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a novel, simplified construction for a manual grilling appliance which permits food articles, such as steaks, hamburgers, and the like, to be grilled in a very short period of time.